Thread Drift

[Crankin]

Get some rest and recovery, Blueberry. I hope you win your fight with TSA. One of my friend's sons is starting his 3d year of med school, so i have some idea of the stress you are under. He just finished his surgery rotation, where he had to be in the OR for 6 hours and couldn't leave to pee. This necessitated restricting water intake, which is not exactly good medical practice when it is 95 degrees out.

[Catrin]

Yikes, so sorry Blueberry and Pax. Not good experiences for sure. Stories like this is why I will drive as much as I can, wishing I could drive to Boston for my training next month but that's just too far and too much wear and tear on my car.

On another note, I'm pretty much feeling a bit like a wild woman. I bought a (rather expensive) one-day pass to GenCon next weekend I've been wanting to do that since I've been here and it will probably be the only time I do it. A day of playing free games on the exhibit floor and some serious people watching. If I had time and more money I might consider a costume but nah, just being there will be enough. I've a friend interested in attending, hopefully she can come.

[smilingcat]

I have had bad taste with TSA on just about every encounter I have had with them.

On a brighter note: Benefits of owning a farm. Tonight, I made spaghetti sauce using our own tomatoes, basil, oregano, chicken (we decided that our own ground chicken taste better than sausages we can buy), walla walla onion, hot pepper (boy is it hot. ground ghost pepper, trinidad scorpion, datil and fatalli). Garlic would have been our own but we sold most of it and we are out. I wanted to keep it basically our farm grown ingredient.

Only ingredients not from our farm was: garlic and mushroom. We skipped olives, anchovies for seasoning since tomato is so good, no butter or pinch of sugar needed either. I hate adding lot of other things into my sauce. I want to taste the yummyness of tomato and the vegetable in the sauce. Forget about this "11 herbs and spices..." That's not cooking!

Well, it was very good.

[Pax]

That sounds wonderful, SC!! I once managed to grow some basil in a pot by my back door, so much fun grabbing some leaves THAT I GREW and adding them to my cooking. I usually have a black thumb, but the basil seemed pretty hardy.

[Blueberry]

Oh yum SmilingCat! We don't have a yard for a garden anymore (just a few herbs/tomatoes on our deck) - but we frequent our local farmers' market often! This has been the summer of tomatoes (and onion and eggplant).

Crankin - I have another 5 months of class, then Step 1, then the wards in March. I'm excited for it to be more real, but really dreading the complete loss of time to care for myself. I shadowed in a surgery last semester - 12 hours of no peeing, drinking, eating, or sitting. I don't think surgery is for me. Survive the rotation and move on. Still thinking about anesthesia (you do get to leave and you aren't sterile - which is nice) and also pondering Derm - but that's a very hard match. We shall see.

The contractor is still going (crossing fingers today is the last day of drilling) - they said 5-6 days and they said they should be "mostly" done tomorrow (on their show up at 10:30, take an hour and a half lunch, and leave at 5 schedule). They provided me with an estimate (without hours or anything else broken out) - and required 1/2 before starting. They asked mid-week if we wanted to upgrade grout (for a small, fixed price) - and we agreed. Today - "This job has taken twice the labor we thought it would and we have had to go through more blades (grinding out the grout). The labor will be double and we will be losing money." Should have asked if they would be refunding had it gone more quickly (seriously doubt it). Really tired of having to clean the other bathroom because they have been using that one too (for hand washing and inconsiderate male peeing). Grrrr....

*sigh* So much for highly recommended contractors. We were going to have them do some work in our kitchen. They just lost that business.

[Crankin]

Yeah, surgery is out for my friend's son, too. He wants to do ER med, so he can have a regular schedule or possibly sports med, as he is already a personal trainer.
So, last night we went to a meet and greet with the president of my younger son's college, alumni, and other parents. This is the son that was in the Marines for 9 years. He has a full scholarship for vets that they have. It was amazing! We didn't know what to expect, as we went to huge state schools and this is a small, highly selective private college. So when I said I was Scott's mom to the prez, he actually knows him and could ask us questions about him. We met a board member who went there, and he had tears in his eyes when we told him Scott's story. Also, the president's assistant knows Scott and his wife quite well. The young alumni were amazing, as was the 90 year old man, who happens to live down the road from me.
This is a world I have had little contact with. It made me very proud of my son, as this place is tough!

[Blueberry]

I don't think ER would be my top choice for a regular schedule. They work about 10-12 shifts a month, but they are all 12 hour shifts and they usually vary (with lots being overnight). You have a lot of free time (which you need to recover), but it's not really regular.
I looked at doing the ortho residency-sports med track - but it's really long and ortho is quite a tough field for women (still). I could do primary care/sports med, but I fear I'd lost the sports aspect of it (and get swallowed by primary care). So many decisions, so little time!

[shootingstar]

One of my sisters has been an ER doctor for over past decade and longer. She drives nearly 50 min. to get to her hospital. She only works several days per week but yes, she does tend to work 12 hr. shifts with most overnight. She also has 2 young children. So this work schedule has worked for her..though she says she's probably shortening her lifespan by working night shifts. The reality is that for her (and other physicians I know, including a medical intern who is wife of a nephew..She is specializing in pediatrics.), there are a limited number of openings for physician specialists ...at least across Canada OR a physician specialist can consider working in more rural areas of which there is some demand. But that gets into other personal preferences in terms of lifestyle, any spousal needs re job choices/where they are at in life, etc.

She seems to like working in a smaller hospital that is still close to major teaching/research hospitals in Metro Toronto.

What is interesting to have heard from her, is the elitist attitudes of certain medical interns trying to enter into some of specialty medical areas. My sister of course, had no personal connections /relationships as an intern, within the medical field (because she comes from a poor, immigrant family) to help her network and wiggle her way in terms of certain internships she might have desired via the medical establishment.

[Pax]

Gotta say, packing the condo up a scant 15 months after we unpacked it, is tiring. And we know this move is temporary too since the apartment we rented will be cost prohibitive when we're retired. Might be time to go back to the days of my 20's when I could move in my car... in one trip.

[ny biker]

Gotta say, packing the condo up a scant 15 months after we unpacked it, is tiring. And we know this move is temporary too since the apartment we rented will be cost prohibitive when we're retired. Might be time to go back to the days of my 20's when I could move in my car... in one trip.

Yeah. I've had a lot of my stuff in a storage unit for a long time now, as contractors have been in my condo doing various things, and I wanted to minimize the amount of stuff they had to move around in order to work. Now as the new floor installation gets closer -- new floor everywhere, including the closets, with the exception of the kitchen and bathroom -- I really have to pack up and get stuff out. I'm doing lots of purging along the way; there's a big pile of stuff in my living room ready to go to Good Will. It's very tiring, even doing it a little at a time.

And when I'm done with the floors, I'm still not done. First there will be touch-up painting to do. After that a lot of stuff can come out of storage. But my next project will be re-doing the insides of my three closets so that I can store stuff more efficiently. Which means it won't make sense to unpack a lot of the stuff that I'm packing up now.

The good thing is that it all gives me a chance to see what I really don't need to keep. If something has been in storage so long that I've forgotten I had it, it's easier to overcome my pack-rat tendencies. I also get motivation from my parents' experience cleaning out the apartment of an elderly aunt after she died. It was so much work and took so long to go through everything, figure out what needed to be kept, what had value and could be given away or sold, and what should be tossed.

[Pax]

I'm starting to think those minimalist people I read about have the right idea. Some own only 100 things, total... I have more than 100 things in my bathroom!

Number 4 http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lif...s-or-less.html is my downfall, I own some very expensive made-in-the-US tools that I could never afford to replace, but even though I haven't had a motorcycle in two years, I lug them around with me.

[ny biker]

I have learned to ignore that rule. Every year when I take my winter clothes out of storage I find at least one old sweater that ends up becoming my "new favorite" for the year, or the new comfy sweater that I wear instead of a sweatshirt when I'm just bumming around the house. And this summer I am wearing the too-large jeans that sat in the bottom of the dresser drawer for years, because I am up 10 lbs and not fitting into many of my summer clothes.

Besides you might end up buying another motorcycle, and then you'll be glad you had those tools.

[Pax]

Very true. And everything we own (two adults) fits easily in a 650 sq ft condo, so I guess we're pretty far from hoarder status.

My wife actually wants me to buy more clothes, every article of clothing I own fits in an LL Bean rolling duffle bag, she says it makes us have to do laundry too often since I run out of pants every three days. LOL

[ny biker]

Ha. I inherited my mother's love of buying clothes and my father's packrat tendencies. I can't get through a vacation with just an LL Bean rolling duffle bag!

[Pax]

Too funny! She's the same, she is literally half my size, but brings twice as many pieces of luggage on vacation.